


Beacon

by traumschwinge



Category: Dragon Age II
Genre: Anders Positive, Angst, Dragon Age Quest: Justice, M/M, Mage Rebellion, Minor Violence, Sided with Mages, Stabbing, resolved emotional tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-11
Updated: 2017-10-11
Packaged: 2019-01-15 21:15:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,421
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12329031
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/traumschwinge/pseuds/traumschwinge
Summary: When Anders refuses to share his plans with Hawke, even after revealing that there is no potion, no plan for him and Justic to separate, Hawke doesn't walk off in a huff. Instead, he stays and pleads his case, hoping his lover will come to understand and trust him if he just talks long enough.





	Beacon

**Author's Note:**

> I hate the pre-go-distract-Ethina dialogue so this is an attempt at a fix it to what I would have wanted.  
>  ~~Give me that "let's be revolutionaries TOGETHER FROM THE START quest you cowards~~

“You can’t tell me because you want to keep me safe?” Hawke opened his mouth and then closed it, pressing his lips together in a thin line. He looked over his shoulders for a brief moment, watching Varric taking a sudden keen interest in Bianca—well, keener than usual—and Isabela playing with one of her knifes. This wasn’t going to work, Hawke decided. He glared at Anders. “Fine! I won’t forget you’ve blackmailed me into this. But I will distract Ethina for you. Whatever it is you’re up to.” He wanted to grab Anders by the front of his shirt and shake him, wanted to yell some sense into him, but refrained. He just clenched and unclenched his fists a couple of times.

Anders looked miserable, behind the mask of determination and relief he’d put up. “Thank you. I really wish I could tell you.”

Hawke shook his head. “Just tell me when.” He turned, leaving the clinic with Varric and Isabela. He very deliberately did not slam the door behind him. Instead, he stopped right outside.

Varric raised an eyebrow. “I take it you’re not coming, then?”

“No.” Hawke jerked his head in the direction of the closed door. “We will fight this one out. Alone.”

“I don’t know about this, Hawke,” Varric sighed. “Just remember, my suite is your suite, especially when you want to nurse your broken heart.”

Hawke only crossed his arms in front of his chest.

Isabela raised both her eyebrows, then put a hand on Varric’s shoulder. “A lost cause if I’ve ever seen one,” she declared, gently leading the visibly worried dwarf toward the stairs. “Have I shown you my newest friend-fiction yet? Maybe that and a few rounds of cards will cheer you up until Hawke’s unavoidable arrival.” She looked back at Hawke, briefly. He shooed her off, offering a thankful smile for about half a moment.

He hated keeping secrets from his favorite dwarf. He really did. He was so bad at it, too. But there were other, more important things. Like finding out what exactly it was his nug brained boyfriend was up to when left to his own devices for too long.

Hawke managed to wait for Anders to come out of his clinic for about ten minutes, maybe a few more. By then, he was too itchy, too caged by his own thoughts to wait any longer. He pushed the door open and stomped back into the empty clinic. “You and I. Talk. Now.” He was halfway to the startled Anders before the words were even out, unceremoniously dragging him out of the clinic by his arm.

“Why not talk here?” Anders asked, trying to free himself from the grip but walking along at the same time, knowing he had little choice.

“Because you don’t want to be overheard,” Hawke growled. He had one clear destination in mind.

“And you think that going home, to _your_ home, is a better idea than staying?” Anders asked as he was all but pushed into the passage leading right into the cellars of the Amell estate.

Hawke followed him, a hand on his shoulder to make sure he wasn’t running away. “No.” He rolled his eyes. “Obviously not. But there’s one such place on the way.”

They didn’t talk anymore until they’d made it into the vault and Hawke, very sensibly, had only closed but not locked the door behind them.

“Garrett, really,” Anders started and then faltered when he saw Hawke’s expression.

“No. I want you mostly to listen and I want to do it here because right now, I am not sure if I will shout. Not entirely.” Hawke sighed. “When I’m done and you still question me enough to not want me to know why you want to sneak into the Chantry. You. The Chantry. As if you couldn’t be more obvious that it’s something catastrophic!” He took a breath. “No, we’re not getting anywhere like this. Anyway.” He ruffled his hair. “If you still think I should not know, I’ll help without knowing. But hear me out first. Please. Just between the two of us.”

Anders looked like a spooked, cornered animal. Enough like one to make Hawke call the whole talking part off. Well, almost.

“I suppose that’s the least I can do,” Anders sighed. “I will listen. But you won’t change my mind.”

Never one to pass on a challenge, Hawke rolled his eyes. “First of all, I’m telling you on the basis that I actually for some reason still love you. All of you. And on the basis that I’m just sick and tired of everything going down in this Maker forsaken city since the whole Qunari incident. Or maybe even before then, I’m not sure.” He shook his head. “Honestly, even if your plan was just ‘go to the Gallows and punch a few Templars’, I’d probably be on board.” A wistful sigh at the thought of punching Knight-Captain Cullen in his oh so concerned looking face. How his fists had itched to do exactly that more than once.

“You know,” Hawke went on, throwing his arms up. “It doesn’t matter how many times I publicly side with anyone, and Maker knows I think Orsino and Meredith both are wrong, every single blighted idiot in this city still thinks I’m somehow working for their enemy.” He pulled a face.

“I’m being kept at arm’s length by those against Meredith. Meredith thinks she can convince me of the evil in each mage by showing me desperate mages making desperate deals. And at the end, how get I treated? What am I? Meredith’s lap dog? Over my dead body. I’m sick and tired of it, Anders. As if I’d side with her. You know, if my sister...” He pressed his lips together.

“Every time I hear them hunt Apostates as if every one of us was a blood mage, I think of her. Not my mother, as everyone reminds me all the time I should. Of Bethany. If she’d made it here… if she’d been found out after this whole city decided to go crazy… they’d have killed her. She was the sweetest sister you could imagine, you know? Or… you don’t, that’s exactly the point, but…” He shook his head. “Sometimes I think Carver and me came out awful because Mother was saving it all up to make Bethany as good as possible. I wish you’d known her. She would have liked you.”

He let out a shaky breath, collapsing on a crate. Thinking of Bethany hurt still. It had been seven years and it still hurt. Just like Mother. Just like thinking about Carver, off being a Templar of all things.

“How can I side with somebody who to my face tells me she wasn’t a person?” He shook his head. “I don’t care what they say about me. But her? Or you? I just couldn’t.” His hands were shaking so he clenched them into fists. “Most of the days, I just wonder if I couldn’t just go over there, to the Gallows, at Meredith’s _invitation_.” He spat the word. “And just burn the whole thing down, consequences be damned. Hell, if that’s the plan, please let me help, there’s nothing in the world I’d rather do.” He let out a shaky breath, leaning back. “I’m tired of hiding what I am. I shouldn’t have to choose between freedom and hiding. You shouldn’t have. Nobody should.”

At long last, when it was clear that Hawke was done talking, Anders drew a shaky breath. “Do you… actually mean it when you say you’d burn it all down?” There was a smile tugging at the corner of his mouth, barely visible, when Hawke looked up for a moment.

“I said I’d drown the world in blood,” Hawke smirked. “Why not burn a couple of Templars first?”

“A real romantic, I see,” Anders sighed, swatting at him. “Was that all? Because it didn’t convince me.”

Hawke shook his head. “You know why I don’t burn it down?” He waited for two heartbeats before just soldiering on. “Because I can’t see an after. There’s no point. I’m just frustrated and I can’t do anything more constructive than indulge in my petty fantasies.” He pulled a face. “And as much as I resent Orsino for wanting to protect the status quo of imprisoning mages for the crime of existing, I couldn’t hurt the mages in the Gallows.” He took the leap he’d been dreading. “Targeting the Chantry is a much better plan.”

“Garrett...” Anders sighed. “Please.”

“No, I mean it. It’s almost brilliant even. Why the hell not? What has the Chantry ever done, aside from delivering the ideology needed to declare a good part of the population not-people. They can’t even pretend they want to help orphans who fled from the Blight. Their Templars can’t even just keep mages locked up without the threat of murder and rape, and then tranquility at the slightest misstep. Or, just a whim, sometimes.” Hawke tried to resist the urge to bury his face in his hands and failed. “I do listen, even when I pretend not to. I’m no good at waiting. I’m no good at passive. I need to take action. But I have no idea where to start. All I know is, that we need the change. And talking won’t get us there.”

Anders didn’t say anything. Hawke took it as a sign he was on the right path.

“I can’t wait for Meredith invoke the Right of Annulment,” he concluded. “Because that’s where she’s headed. I do believe Orsino there. I can’t just wait for it. I need to stop it.” He lowered his hands, clenching them again. “I want to tear this whole system down. Forever.”

He looked over to find Anders staring at him. “...you truly mean that.” It wasn’t a question.

“Do you know how hard it was not to throw a fireball at Meredith’s face when she said that Evelina, that somebody as self-less and caring as her, was alone to blame for being desperate when nobody helped her as she begged for help, not for herself, but others, children? When she played by their blighted rules and begged the Chantry again and again and didn’t get any help, any acknowledgment, even?” Hawke shook his head. “Of course I mean it.”

“You’re right,” Anders sounded defeated. “I mean to… I _will_ blow the Chantry up. I just thought you’d… you’d stop me, if I told you.”

“No more compromise?” Hawke hadn’t meant to, but he was grinning. It was probably all the relief of having his boyfriend talk to him again, finally, and not just the prospect of taking action with an actual bang. “How big a blowing up are we talking about?”

Anders rolled his eyes. “Big enough you could probably see it all the way to Ferelden?”

Hawke whistled. “That seems appropriate. A beacon, then? Any chance we could make it bright enough Lake Calenhad would see it?”

“An end to the Chantry here in Kirkwall, at least.” Anders fidgeted, ignoring the second part of what Hawke had said. “I… didn’t think too much about the after,” he admitted. “I didn’t think there would be an after. For me. Not… Not really.”

Hawke frowned. “What do you mean, no after? There has to be something. You can’t just…” His mouth became a perfect O shape when the realization trickled in. “You meant to die there and then.” It was just barely not a huff. “And you think that’d be fine with me? Think again.” He crossed his arms in front of his chest. “No. After, we leave. When it all is over, and Meredith is gone, because I will fight her, no matter what, for every mage I met and all those in the Gallows I haven’t and, well, for myself, then, we’ll leave. We’ll spread the tale. We’ll help making the same thing happen in other Circles.” He closed his eyes, taking a couple of deep breaths. “What’s a revolution if we stop at a single, easily crush-able uprising?”

“You can’t be serious.” In shock, or maybe panic, Anders voice had jumped up an octave or two. “You can’t actually be serious.”

“Why not? Revolutionary sounds so much better than martyr.” Tentatively, Hawke held out his hand for Anders to take. “I’ll be with you til the end of our lives. You just have to let me.”

“I have heard better proposals than what boils down ‘let’s be fugitives together’,” Anders laughed. Still, he did take Hawke’s hand and that was all that counted. “This is when we make more plans, then?”

“And here I thought, blow up the Chantry, kill Meredith, spread the revolution through all Circles in Thedas was already a pretty good plan.” Hawke let out a fake sigh.

“About that middle part, you don’t really think that’ll work out just like that, do you?” Anders squeezed Hawke’s hand.

“Why not?” Hawke shrugged. “I made enough allies. I made enough _friends_. There’s a chance we could make it.”

“Not we, you,” Anders mused.

Hawke blinked. “What are you talking about?”

Anders sighed. “You wanted a plan. So here’s one. You can’t be sure she won’t kill you.” His voice shook as he said that. “You can’t. Not entirely. And I don’t want to stay behind, believe me. I want to be there, by your side, together.”

“But?” Hawke coaxed, a cold lump settling into the pit of his stomach.

“If I don’t come along and you fail, I could still carry the news onto the other Circles,” Anders concluded. “If we both fail together and die, it ends with us.”

It was reasonable. Hawke knew it was. He just wished he was just slightly worse at being reasonable. “Nobody would believe me if I just left you,” he tried not to be reasonable. “I love you.”

“And I would never forgive myself if you died just because I wasn’t there to save you.” Fingers entwined, Hawke could feel Anders’ healing magic tingle just barely beneath his skin. “But you’re right, this can be bigger than ourselves. It always was, even when we only shepherded mages out of the city.”

“How am I supposed to just leave you behind?” Hawke tried to laugh, but it was raspy in his dry throat.

“You kill me.” Anders’ voice was flat, matter-of-factly. “Or make it look like you did, anyway. Justice, if Justice’d agree, we can do that. He can keep me alive long enough for me to heal any wound. After you’re done, we’ll meet and leave.”

“Or we could just tell our friends,” Hawke suggested, knowing he was stubborn for stubbornness’ sake.

“Your friends.” Anders shook his head. “No. Would you really tell Fenris? Or Aveline?”

Hawke gave a helpless shrug. Anders didn’t have to put it like that. “I can’t,” he tried again.

“Why not? I’ll have just committed a terrible crime you don’t agree with, for all they know. I could even beg you, if that makes it more convincing.” Anders squeezed their hands together. “Even if it’d go wrong, I’d rather die at your hands than anyone else’s, my love.”

Hawke closed his eyes. It wasn’t actually any easier phrased like that. “Does Justice agree?”

“With the plan? Yes.”

The words were out too quickly for Hawke to believe them. “With saving you after I… I assume I’d have to stab you, wouldn’t I? I can’t just use magic for that.”

Anders was still for a moment. Then, the familiar glow of Justice was in his eyes, breaking his skin. “For all the lives we will take, it would be just for us to die,” he rumbled. Then, a pause. “But you’re right, Hawke, for the cause, for justice for all mages, it would be better if you wouldn’t stop at Kirkwall. The plan is… acceptable.”

Hawke blinked, chasing the after images away as the glowing subsided.

Anders rubbed his eyes, looking worn and weary. “Well, there you have it.”

“Great,” Hawke said dryly. “Just what I always wanted. Stabbing you. In front of everybody. Before I run off towards a genocidal, paranoid Templar. What else was I afraid of in my life? Maybe we could fit some more of that into our plans.”

“Maybe, if you hadn’t killed that High Dragon in the Bone Pit...” Anders mused. “Or should I find a way to message the Qunari? Maybe they already have a new Arishok for you to battle. I’m sure we could find and wake some ancient, demonic evil, too.”

Hawke groaned. “No. Not the demonic evil. You’re calling it upon us. This is Kirkwall, after all.” He did smile, however. “You don’t always have to go along with what I say.”

“But it’d be a waste of a perfectly good setup most of the time.” Anders was smiling, too, maybe the first genuine smile Hawke’d seen on him in weeks.

Hawke rolled his eyes. “Is there a way into the Chantry from the sewers?” he tried to steer the conversation back to business. “I want to be with you when you set it up. I want to be there.”

“But you already agreed to help in front of Varric and Isabela,” Anders reminded him. “It would be easier if I just did it on my own.”

Hawke shook his head. “Easier? Maybe. But I want to do this with you.”

“Of course you do.” Anders let out a long-suffering, yet undeniably fond, sigh. “There is. I would have used it, if you’d… decided not to help me. It’s full of spiders and the undead, though.”

“Whenever it isn’t?” Hawke rolled his eyes. “We can handle that, between the two of us.”

“The day after tomorrow, then?” Anders suggested. “And the night after you distract the Grand Cleric. It’d be easier to tell the others that I need three days for the mixture. Three is always such a magical number. I’m sure Varric would appreciate it, too, for its narrative value.”

Hawke snorted. “Probably.” He leaned his head on Anders’ shoulder and tried to ignore how the feathers of his pauldrons tickled his nose. “Varric and Isabela seemed convinced we’d break each other’s hearts tonight over this.” He sighed. “I’m expected at the Hanged Man. To nurse my broken heart with some awful whiskey and cards, most likely.”

Anders patted his head. “You don’t have to, if you don’t want to go.”

“But I should.” Hawke shook his head. “They’re our friends. Ours both. And if I really...” He swallowed. “Since I want to go behind their backs like this, I should not make it easier for them to guess that maybe you’d trust me in this after all.”

The hand on Hawke’s head vanished. “Then you should,” Anders declared. He hesitated. “Would it be better if I slept at the clinic, too…?”

“No!”Hawke had startled upright. He felt a little silly. “I mean… there’s no need. And… I don’t want you to. And, I do have a broken heart that needs nursing, just not with whiskey. I’d prefer...”

“...a Healer’s Touch?” Anders suggested, smiling softly.

Hawke nodded. He leaned over and pressed a kiss to Anders’ stubbly cheek. “I’ll just be gone for a single drink.”

“That’s what they all say,” Anders laughed as he shooed him off.

On his way down to the Hanged Man, Hawke did his best to find an adequately distraught expression. Varric and Isabela were expecting the fight to have gone badly and Hawke could see why. He truly could, considering how stubborn both he and Anders generally were, how good he had been at avoiding to talk about the entire situation.

Hawke rubbed a hand across his face. He didn’t feel much like drinking. He didn’t even feel much like Varric’s company and that right there was a sign that there was something wrong with him.

He was just walking up the stairs in front of the Hanged Man when he remembered the tiny detail in Anders’ plans, that he’d have to stab him. That thought helped making him miserable, honestly so, and he held onto it, desperately. He wouldn’t risk Varric and Isabela looking right through him, they knew him too well.

Steeling himself, he pushed door to the Hanged Man open, ordered with Corff and then stole upstairs, to Varric’s room. It was, thankfully, just the two of them waiting for him there, cards on the table between them, small, scrawled-on notes instead of coin in the pot. They looked up, offering him sympathetic glances as he dropped into his usual seat.

“I take it it didn’t go all that well, then, Hawke?” Varric asked, rubbing his chin and pretending he actually cared about the cards in his hand.

Hawke let out a vague grunt.

“That bad, hum?” Varric discarded a card and drew a new one.

“He wouldn’t even listen,” Hawke murmured. “I don’t even know why I came here.” Both close enough to the truth, he wagered.

“Oh kitten,” Isabela sighed, reaching out to pet his hair. “Shall I just deal you in for now?”

Hawke shook his head. “I don’t… I did… I…” He groaned into the mug that had appeared before him. “I promised I’d still help.”

Isabela pushed five cards at him. “Yes, of course you did, kitten,” she sighed. “We had expected nothing less of you.”

“Just tell us where and when and we’ll be there, Hawke, sure as always,” Varric assured him, earning himself a brief, grateful smile.

Hawke peeked at his deck. Of course he’d seen Isabela cheat, but it was a good hand. Another sign that they were worried about him. It only made him feel all the worse. “Three days from now, at nightfall, in front of the Chantry,” he sighed, replacing the single songs card in his hand.

Two days later, Hawke met Anders in some shady corner of Darktown. There was an entry point into the sewers nearby, Hawke knew. They walked in silence, staffs held at the ready. You never knew what you’d find in the sewers of the City of Chains, after all. Anders led them, first through parts of the sewers Hawke knew but soon enough through slimy, stinking passages he’d never seen before, slipping past the moldy bricks of badly sealed entrances. The didn’t run into any humans, no assassins, no thugs, no smugglers of any kind this time. Spiders and the undead however…

Hawke brought the sharp end of his staff down on the fleshy body of a Giant Spider, surveying the smoldering corpses around them. “How much further?” he asked.

“It is not much further,” Anders, or rather, Justice, said. He was still glowing from the encounter, relying on the spirit’s powers rather than the mage’s now that they were alone. Hawke didn’t complain. Knowing Justice was on their side had always been something he found comforting. With their current plan and goal, even more so.

True enough, they reached an actual door, wood rotting in its hinges, only a little while after. The room behind the door was just as moldy as the sewers, but it was comparatively dry and the masonwork was of better quality. There was also a group of walking, stabbing Corpses. Hawke let fire rain upon them, dealing quickly with those advancing on them. Lightning crackled through the air, chaining between the skeleton archers aiming at them. It wasn’t much of a fight.

Hawke looked around once there were no more undead shambling about. “Anders?” he asked. “Are you sure we’re in the right place?” The room had no second door.

Anders let out a low huff. “You really think they would not seal the parts of their cellars off that are infested with undead and spiders?” He slowly walked along the far wall, paying attention to the stones. When he stopped, he knocked against some stones, making them shift and little bits of mortar fall down. “Here. Can you give me a hand?”

Hawke raised his hand, letting mana flow but not yet readying a spell, with a questioning look on his face.

“Nothing like that.” Anders pointed at the blade at the end of Hawke’s staff. “Leaver some stones out of the wall. They’re already loose, it shouldn’t be too much.”

Hawke let his hand sink with a theatrical sigh. “You never want to do anything the fun way,” he joked. He pushed the blade between some of the stones, feeling no resistance from any mortar.

“Who says that watching you use your muscles isn’t one of the fun ways?” Anders asked. Despite his grim expression, there was mirth twinkling in his eyes.

Hawke shrugged, bracing himself on the slippery ground before pushing against his staff, silently praying for the blade to hold. The stones shifted, scratching against each other, One dropped out of the wall, then another. It took some effort, but soon the hole was big enough for them to crawl through. Hawke wiped the sweat from his brow. “Fun way, yeah?” he panted.

Anders pressed a kiss to the corner of his mouth instead of giving him an answer.

The room beyond the wall was a cavernous cellar, smelling of stale air and long forgotten barrels and crates. Their tiny specks of magelight did almost nothing against the gloom. Anders helped Hawke to his feet, their hands lingering for a moment. “Almost there, we’re almost under the central hall of the Chantry,” he whispered.

“Not that it’ll matter much, by the size of the thing you described,” Hawke muttered back.

Anders nodded. “No, it won’t matter all that much. But I’d rather not blow the square in front of the Chantry up, if I can avoid it.” His eyes turned blue and glowy for a moment, but his voice stayed the same. “The less innocent victims, the better.”

They passed through one, two more doorways, into new cellars that were much the same, until Anders stopped. They nodded at each other. “This is it?” Hawke whispered.

“This is it. No more compromises. No more Circle, no more Templars. No more Chantry,” Anders confirmed. His expression was hard, grim.

Hawke stood back and watched as Anders set up the bomb, careful as with any spell. It would need to be triggered, a quick reaching out with magic, when the time came. Until then, it would remain unsuspicious, looking like nothing more than dirt and rubbish in a place filled with both and dust to boot.

Anders wiped his hands on his robes when he was done. “Thank you,” he whispered, back in the first room, as they put the stones Hawke had removed with so much effort back into place. There was no real reason for them to do that, they just did, covering their tracks in the unlikely event that somebody would find themselves down in the unused cellars and notice the hole. It was not much more than busywork, while both their minds raced, thinking of what would come, what they already had done.

Hawke reached out and squeezed Anders’ shoulder. “This is the right thing. I’m with you, through it all.”

Anders put his hand over Hawke’s, eyes slipping closed. He opened and closed his mouth, swallowed, sighed. “I still don’t know how I deserve you, Garrett. But I love you, Maker, do I love you.”

Ash and rubble were still raining from the sky. Smoke pressed against his throat with each breath. Hawke willed his hand around the dagger to still, forcing himself not to shake. He could feel the eyes of his friends on him. He did not dare to look at their expressions as he walked up behind Anders, sitting on a crate. “No more compromise,” his love had said when it had happened. There wouldn’t be. Not when they knew the only way to stop the Knight-Commander from killing every single person in the Circle.

Idly, Hawke wondered if that meant he’d have to fight Carver, too, when he’d face her.

Everything was easier to bear than what he was doing.

“I’m sorry,” he said, loud enough to be heard by more than just Anders.

The dagger found no more or less resistance than any other time Hawke had pushed it into flesh.

He couldn’t pull it back out, couldn’t bear to look or touch or even stay.

He turned to his companions, his friends. Clutching his staff for comfort, stability.

“We need to go to the Gallows. Now,” he announced. The sooner he left the better.

Nobody commented, no condolences were offered as he strode off, squaring his shoulders in an attempt to signal he didn’t want to talk about it. For once, his friends actually stayed silent at his nonverbal request.

“I’m not coming,” Hawke said, standing at the pier. All but him and Varric had boarded the ship. Isabela’s ship. Their last chance at a safe escape. Varric had said he had some important business left unfinished. Hawke… just wouldn’t. Couldn’t. His body hurt from the strain of the fights, against the homunculus Orsino had turned himself into, against Meredith after. They’d been let go, in a moment when Hawke had been ready to fight Knight-Captain Cullen, too, for just a single wrong word, a single twitch.

“What do you mean you’re not coming? Hawke!” Isabela yelled. She’d been in the middle of getting ready to sail out and had gone still at his words. “You can’t just stay.”

“No.” He shook his head. “But I’m not coming with you. I already asked too much.” He dropped a hand on Varric’s shoulder for a brief moment. “Maybe, the next time we meet, I’ll tell you everything you want, not just the good parts.”

Hawke fled. He didn’t start running until he was out of sight, ducking into an alley and then the next. There was no knowing if he’d be followed. His friends were like that, sometimes. He just hoped that this time, they wouldn’t. He wanted them gone. Safe. Safety was the one thing he’d never been able to offer anyone.

His legs almost gave out with relief when he reached what soon wouldn’t be Anders’ clinic anymore. When he found Anders, alive and well and ready to be pulled into his arms standing in front of it. One rucksack over his shoulders, another in the hand not holding his staff. The hug was brief, with no time for now for a proper talk, or even the closeness Hawke craved. It had to wait, until the end of the day, or maybe even until Kirkwall was nothing more than a burning flicker at the horizon.

He let go, taking the rucksack and then the cloak Anders held out for him. No time for better disguises. They needed to leave. Hawke pulled the hood deep into his face, just as Anders had.

“Everything ready?” he asked when he was done.

Anders nodded, his mouth tight. “Ready for days now.”

Lighting the clinic was the matter of a single spell, even though they both cast it. It went up like dry cinder. Anders had prepared for this, after all.

Somehow, their hands found each other as they hurried off. A squeeze, a tug, never losing touch. It was all they had for now. A promise of the future, but not yet there.

Varric pushed his way through the people hurrying out of Darktown. He wasn’t sure how Hawke had managed to lose him in the docks, but he wasn’t ready to give up on his friend yet. There was one place he wanted to check, now that he’d returned to the square in front of the Chantry and found no trace of Anders. A part of him had suspected he wouldn’t. And so he’d come down to Darktown, rushing to the clinic as fast as he could.

He didn’t pay attention to the people around him, not really, but for a brief moment it was like he saw the flash of blood on metal, two actual mage staffs. A hand touching his shoulder for a second. When he turned to get a second look, he couldn’t find who he for a second believed had just passed him in the crowd.

The clinic was burning, bright, roaring, when he reached it. There would be nothing left of it once the fire had run its course.

Varric shook his head.

“Next time we meet, Hawke,” he told the flames. “You’re going to tell me a hell of a story, I’m sure.”


End file.
